Abe Lincoln came to my town—Janesville, Wisconsin—last month, 150 years after the last time he came to Janesville, then when he was thinking about running for president.
He spent the night at the Tallman House, as the guest of industrialist William Tallman and his wife, Emeline. Somehow Lincoln’s boots got misplaced, so he missed his train the next morning and thus stayed for church. Attended First Congregational. But that’s a story for another time.
The Tallman House is still here. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Rock County Historical Society manages the 26-room mansion as a tourist attraction.
The Society invited Lincoln to return. Actually, they invited Max and Donna Daniels, who portray the Lincolns, and 150 guests had a fine dinner and evening with them.
The next day, Lincoln—Daniels—and I sat at a picnic table and talked about the man and his times, and one of his favorite activities—reading.
Lincoln reads
Abraham Lincoln read everything he could get his hands on, says Max Daniels, a Lincoln scholar who’s been playing the role of the nation’s 16th president for the past 22 years.
“He read Shakespeare. He read Aesop’s Fables. He read the statutes of the state of Indiana. Blackstone’s Commentary.
“He was a voracious reader. He enjoyed reading for the texture and rhythm of the words—especially Shakespeare. In some of his speeches, you can hear this cadence he adapted.”
Lincoln was not a member of a church, but he read the Bible extensively.
“He drew great inspiration from that,” Daniels says. “He’d often quote from the Bible—his House Divided speech is a very good example.
“I don’t think he ever met a book he didn’t like. In fact, when he lived in Indiana, he borrowed a book which was destroyed, and he spent 12 hours a day for three days, earning enough money to pay for the value of the book. He thought it was worth it because he had learned something from that book.”
It wasn’t just books. Lincoln also subscribed to several newspapers, and he would read them aloud in his Springfield law office.
“That annoyed his law partner, Billy Herndon, no end,” Daniels says. “But Lincoln said, ‘I can understand it better if I see it and hear it at the same time. My mind can absorb it better.’
“He would sit with his feet propped up, reading sometimes for hours.”
Last month, NPR’s Susan Stamberg interviewed Frank Milligan, director of the Lincoln Cottage, the 34-room home on the high ground of Washington, four miles from the Capitol. Lincoln spent his summers there—1862, ’63, and ’64. He would ride out in the evening, relax on the veranda, sleep and breakfast in the cottage, then ride back in to the Capitol in the morning.
Lincoln as a reader came up in the interview.
Said Milligan, “Many mornings, David Derickson, the captain of Lincoln’s cavalry guard, had to pry the president out of the cottage library to get him to go to work. Typically, [Derickson said in his letters and diaries] he would find Lincoln here reading Shakespeare or the Bible or military strategy. And Derickson would get him up and into the front room for his coffee and egg, and on his way down to the White House.”
If Lincoln could have had his way, he would not have left the library.
How Max Daniels came to be the 16th president of the United States
Max Daniels auditioned for the role of Abraham Lincoln in the play Lincoln’s Little Spies, a show the Albright Community Theater in Warrenville, Illinois, was doing.
“I was the tallest and the homeliest guy in the room, so I got the part,” he says.
This was back in 1987. Daniels has now been playing the role for more than 20 years.
“At the time, I had shoulder-length hair, a full beard and mustache, so I had to cut my hair and get rid of the mustache,” he says. “I thought, well, a couple weeks and I can grow my hair out again.”
But someone saw Daniels as Lincoln and asked him if he would be in a parade. Another asked if he would give a speech as Lincoln.
One invitation led to another because Daniels, a tall man with a rugged face, bears a striking resemblance to the nation’s 16th president.
“About the fourth or fifth time out, somebody said, ‘Would you mind bringing your wife as Mary?’” Daniels says.
Donna Daniels was a theater person, so they borrowed a costume.
“Well, that launched a career. But the problem was people started asking questions.”
And the questions were darned hard to answer. Daniels, you see, is a Southerner—from Sweet Gum Ridge, Alabama.
“We have a different perspective of Lincoln in the South, so I had to relearn history. I didn’t even know how many children he had, nothing about the man.”
So he set to reading. Daniels’ library now contains more than a thousand books about Lincoln. Now there aren’t many questions about Lincoln and his period that Daniels can’t answer in the character and voice of the president.
“In some ways, Lincoln’s a very simple person to understand, and in some ways he’s as complex as any mathematical problem you’ll ever come across.”
Max and Donna wrote a script for a one-man show, and “the dialogue was like watching paint dry. It was boring,” Daniels says. “Lincoln didn’t drink. He didn’t cuss. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t twirl a rope. Fortunately for history, he had Mary.”
Lincoln and Mary were on the opposite ends of the social scale. Mary Todd was high society from Lexington, Kentucky. Lincoln was a country lawyer. That made for tension, for drama.
They wrote a new script, An Evening With Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. The Daniels set it in the White House on the evening of April 14, 1865. It ends with the Lincolns leaving for Ford’s Theater.
The play is a powerful piece, and it’s now one of 20 Lincoln programs the couple present at events around the Midwest.
But we’re ahead of the story.
In 1994, the unexpected happened.
Daniels was the assistant head of maintenance for an Illinois bank that had three branches. A larger bank bought the company, then a larger bank bought that one, and finally A.B.N. Emerald, a Dutch bank, bought the big company. Six months in, Emerald’s executives decided they didn’t need Daniels.
“So here I am, wondering what am I going to do for a job. I was doing occasional appearances as Lincoln, so my wife and I decided we should go for it. We should become self-employed. But it was terrifying.”
The first years were lean, but no longer. From September to May, they are in the schools of Illinois. In the summer, they appear at events in a five-state area.
Says Daniels, “I wake up some mornings wondering how in the world we have been truly this blessed, to be able to do something we enjoy and still earn a living. It’s a gift of a lifetime.”
If you want to know more about the man who plays Lincoln, go to the Daniels’ website: www.abeandthebabe.com
© Jerry Peterson.
